The Queen’s companions

The Queen has had corgis by her side for almost 90 years. Here, royal biographer Penny Junor describes the remarkable story of how Her Majesty’s muchloved dogs saved the day at a palace luncheon…

In 2014, the Queen held a private lunch at Buckingham Palace. David Nott, a surgeon from Wales, was among the guests. He had just been made an OBE. For ten months a year, he worked as a consultant in three London hospitals and for two months he volunteered his expertise in conflict surgery in the world’s most dangerous war zones.

At the lunch table, he found himself seated beside the Queen. He had been back in the UK for ten days. It usually took him three months to readjust. When she turned to talk to him, he couldn’t speak. As he described it later: “When the Queen turned to me and said, ‘I hear you’ve just been in Aleppo,’ I could feel my bottom lip quivering. I couldn’t say a word. There’s no doubt I was suffering from post-traumatic stress. All I could do was stare long and hard at the wall. She realised something was terribly wrong and said she’d try to help me. Then she started talking about her dogs and asked if I’d like to see them. I said I would. I was trying not to cry, to hold it all together and suddenly a courtier appeared with the corgis, who went under the table. Then a silver tin labelled ‘Dog Biscuits’ was brought to the table. The Queen broke a biscuit in two, gave half to me and said, ‘Why don’t we feed the dogs?’ We kept feeding them and stroking them for half an hour or so as she told me all about them. The humanity of what she did was unbelievable. She was so warm and wonderful, I will never forget it. She wasn’t the Queen anymore but this lovely person with a human face.”

EXTRACTED FROM All the Queen’s Corgis by Penny Junor (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99).